Saturday Email Bag - Turkey Signs Up Against Terrorists While Europe Dawdles

It's Saturday email bag time and this past week, most comments focused on aspects of the Iranian nuclear deal and the future of the Middle East. While reviewing regional events, of course the latest news from Turkey fills the space and has weighty consequences not only for the Middle East but for Europe. ~~~~~ Turkey confirmed today that its fighter jets hit militant camps of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) - regarded as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the US - in northern Iraq overnight, and Turkish ground forces hit PKK and ISIS fighters in northern Syria. Fighter jets hit PKK targets in several locations in northern Iraq, including warehouses,"logistic points," living quarters and storage buildings, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's office said. Turkish fighter jets bombed three ISIS targets in Syria on Friday, trying to pre-empt a planned attack on Turkey, according to a senior Turkish government official. Turkey's security operations will continue for as long as it faces a threat, Davutoglu said on Saturday. "These operations are not 'one-point operations' and will continue as long as there is a threat against Turkey." Earlier, Turkey gave permission for both unmanned and piloted American warplanes to conduct strikes against ISIS from two Turkish air bases. The Turkish airstrikes on Friday were the first by Turkish warplanes against ISIS targets inside Syria. The office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said three F-16 jets bombed two command centers and a rendezvous point across the border from Kilis in southern Turkey without entering Syrian airspace. “We received intelligence about stockpiles of weapons and a gathering of Islamic State militants very close to our border,” the spokesman said. The Turkish government also announced on Friday that it had arrested 297 people, including 37 foreigners, who were suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations. The arrests were made in simultaneous raids in 13 provinces, according to officials. Arrested in the raids was Ebu Hanzala, a Salafist cleric considered to be one of the spiritual leaders of the ISIS in Turkey. Hanzala has been arrested before in counterterrorism operations, but Turkey has never had enough evidence to prosecute him. ~~~~~ Prime Minister Davutoglu said all "terrorist groups" will be fought equally. Turkey's more active role comes after a suspected ISIS suicide bomber killed 32 people, some of them Kurds, this week in the border town of Suruc. That touched off a wave of violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast, with the PKK killing at least two police officers, calling it retaliation for the suicide bombing. Many Kurds and opposition groups have suspected Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party of covertly backing ISIS against Kurdish fighters in Syria, which Turkey has always denied. Erdogan took a political risk in starting peace talks in 2012 with the Kurds, who represent nearly 20% of Turkey's population, but they now blame him for backtracking on promises. On Friday, Erdogan said he had told US President Obama that the PKK would be a focus for attacks. Areas of northern Syria cleared of Islamic State militants will become a "safe zone," Turkey Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday, after Turkish warplanes pounded jihadist positions in a series of strikes : "When areas in northern Syria are cleared of the (ISIS) threat, the safe zones will be formed naturally....We have always defended safe zones and no- fly zones in Syria. People who have been displaced can be placed in those safe zones." ~~~~~ Hurriyet Daily News is an established and respected English-language Turkish newspaper. Today one of its Opinion section essays said : "Following a telephone conversation with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan a day before, US President Barack Obama told the BBC on July 23 that there were two aspects of a strategy against ISIL. The first was to stop the foreign terrorist fighters’ traffic in and out of Syria and “shrink” their operational environment, mainly with Turkish and Jordanian cooperation. The second was interesting: “Pushing al-Assad, the Russians and the Iranians recognize that there’s going to be a political transition, before Syria pulls the entire region into what could be even a longer and bloodier conflict.” The Opinion piece said that according to unnamed diplomatic sources, there is a US Plan under way for some months to send Assad and his family outside the country, keeping the regime without creating a further power vacuum that would let radical groups to take over. The sources also say that the issue was broached with the Iranians in late May during the nuclear talks in Geneva, but rejected because both Russia and Iran continue to support al-Assad. ~~~~~ Obama’s statement to the BBC shows that attempts to find a solution to the Syrian civil war without al-Assad and his family are still there, as they have been since the Syrian civil war began. But it is Turkey's decision this week to join the war against ISIS that puts the whole Syrian situation in a new phase. The shift comes after months of pressure from Turkey’s Western allies. American officials welcomed the decision on Thursday, calling it a “game changer.” Senior United States military commanders say the agreement to allow American aircraft to fly missions from Turkey greatly shortens the time and distance to their targets, providing "additional flexibility and agility in addressing this enemy ISIL that we’re dealing with in Iraq and in Syria,” according to General Joseph L. Votel, head of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command. Erdogan described the airstrikes as “a first step” against Islamist, Kurdish and leftist militants. He called on terrorist groups to lay down their arms and said they would “face consequences” if they failed to do so. ~~~~~ Dear readers, what is Erdogan's real motivation? An attempt to hold on to his compromised political power? An effort to prevent Turkish domestic guerrilla war between ISIS/PKK and Turkish forces? A realization by sunni Erdogan and Turkey that the Iranian deal means eventual greater beefing up of al-Assad by his shiite Iranian cousins? All of the above?"Whatever his motives, Erdogan has helped Europe. Turkey's western borders are with Greece and Bulgaria. Thousands of illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are crossing Turkey to enter Europe through Greece and Bulgaria. They wait on Turkey's western borders "for an occasion to cross,” says Marc Pierini, an expert on Turkey and the Middle East at Carnegie Europe, a foreign policy analysis group. “If you talk about returning jihadists, you are talking about dozens. I have seen such fighters here with my own eyes....I have talked to them." Both Greece and Bulgaria are building barriers along their Turkish borders to keep these clandestines out. Bulgaria’s border police have recorded a 300% increase in 2015 of illegal immigrants entering from Turkey. In the first three months of 2015, a total of 3,200 people have been captured trying to access Bulgaria from Turkey. Bulgaria is building a 160-km razor wire barrier to stop this influx. Greece reported 8,735 illegal immigrants arrested by Greek port authorities on the Island of Lesvos  during the March-April 2015 period, compared to 1,345  immigrants during  the same period last year. Samos' illegal immigrants’ arrests increased 534%, reaching 2,410, compared to 380 in all of 2014. Greece estimates that it has 500,000 illegals, many passing through Turkey. So, while the West is thankful that its NATO member Turkey has joined the war on ISIS, Europe should rejoice twice -- and wake up to the fact that jihadist terrorists are flooding in while it cannot decide on EU-wide policies to deal with illegal-entry terrorists, its own existential problem. Europe should wake up before it's too late.